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Urban Forager | Growing a Salad in Winter

Ava Chin for The New York TimesDandelion roots can be forced indoors, producing healthy greens even out of season.

Instead of throwing down weedkiller, why not dig up dandelions for next winter’s food?

Last year, I decided that instead of suffering through another winter without local greens, I would try my hand at forcing roots — an age-old practice that yields springy vegetables even in the middle of winter. The foraging guru Euell Gibbons forced pokeweed and dandelion roots in his cellar, documenting it in his 1962 book, “Stalking the Wild Asparagus,” and I was curious to see if I could recreate it in an apartment in New York City.

In preparation for the long winter, I dug up dandelion roots last fall at the College of Staten Island, dreaming of the days when I’d be able to add young shoots to my pre-spring salads. (It’s best to dig roots before the first frost, and from places where no pesticides have been used.)

In the process of forcing, you have to first trick the bulb or root into thinking it’s winter (a refrigerator is often used), and later the roots are moved to a warm space, signaling spring. This allows plants to bloom in their off-season. Forcing roots is a lot like forcing flower bulbs — you can try it provided there’s space in the bottom of your refrigerator. Since I don’t have a cellar and space in the refrigerator is limited, I planted mine in a dirt-filled pot and kept it outside a friend’s doorstep on Staten Island for a month and a half. Edible shoots benefit from a few good hard frosts, and, of course, mine had several.

The year before, following Mr. Gibbon’s example, I had forced pokeweed roots (Phytolacca americana) — which, in maturity, is thoroughly toxic — growing in the darkened hallway of my apartment building. That tenacious plant’s young shoots were once popular in the South as poke salad or “salet.” The rather alien-looking sprouts were delicious, even twice-boiled (several changes of water are necessary to extract toxins). But I felt my mouth start to tingle as I ate them, so I put down my fork (and that project). (Many medical authorities consider all parts of Phytolacca americana poisonous, and I do not advise consuming it.)

A few weeks ago, I brought my potted dandelion roots home, setting them on the kitchen floor, where the warmth and a good watering would simulate “spring.” Thinking they might need some time to adjust, I decided against watering the pot right away, and promptly forgot about it as I engaged in a frenzy of cooking braises, resulting in a steamy kitchen. A week later, I noticed several toothy-looking, one-inch dandelion shoots, the color of young corn, sprouting out of the pot.

Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), a k a lion’s tooth, blowball, faceclock, is one of our most ubiquitous and identifiable weedy plants. Native to Eurasia, it was first brought over by European colonists and is the bane of many American gardeners and homeowners. But William Cobbett, author of the 19th-century classic “The American Gardener,” considered its springtime shoots “one of the very best of greens.” He called it “a sort of wild Endive.” (When Mr. Cobbett arrived on Long Island in 1817, lacking a tended garden, he noticed the wild dandelions growing underfoot. “I have always, since that time, looked at this weed with a more friendly eye,” he wrote.)

Dandelions — high in vitamins A, C and K and rich in calcium, iron and manganese — have a long culinary history in Europe as a salad green, leaf vegetable, jam, wine and even as a coffeelike beverage. Medicinally, the plant has been used as a diuretic, liver and kidney support, wart remover and respiratory aid.

But this little pot of Taraxacum officinale is destined for our next salad, where each young shoot tastes like summer. After that, when they’ve matured, they’ll be transformed into a bitter-greens pie. Until then, I’m happy to watch the little basal rosettes, which I used to squash with my shoe as a child, growing under the cold glare of the kitchen window.

Ava Chin is a professor of creative nonfiction and journalism at the College of Staten Island. The Urban Forager appears every other Saturday.

Fascinating method to trick plants and benefit from it. By the way, on nomenclature, dandelion is just anglicized dent-de-lion, French for ‘Lion’s tooth’, from the tooth-like leaves. Nowadays the French word is ‘pissenlit’, which refers, as you might think, to the diuretic roots (don’t eat them before a long journey). Blowball is also self-explanatory, but I’ve no idea where ‘faceclock’ comes from. The species name, Taraxacum, derives from the Arabic ‘tarashaquq’, in ancient pharmaceutical texts, and the variety we generally see, Taraxacum officinale, was intentionally brought to America by Europeans like apples (strangely we have no legend of Johnny Dandelionseed).

Also, the leaves of the dandelion are edible, raw or cooked, but it’s better to make wine out of the flowers than snack on them. And I think they’re about the best flower around (although I wouldn’t give them to a date), because kids can have fun with them, flower or puffball, and nobody minds. Like, you can eat tulips, but people will yell at you when you do.

To pre-emptively answer the question, no I’m not a dandelion specialist, just did a little research to add to this excellent article. Cheers!

Just in case potential disturbing anagrams or double entendres are giving the moderator trouble, let me point out that I just lifted a lot of my info from Wikipedia (check out what it’s got on dandelions, lot of cool stuff about them). Also yes I’ve tried eating tulips, the flowers, and the fancy fringed ones were not nearly as good as the simple, yellow or red ones (fancy were much more bitter, yellow were fairly sweet). But people do complain unless you personally bought the tulips (and sometimes they still complain on grounds of weirdness).

Growing up in an Italian household, we were accustomed to the early spring ritual of harvesting dandelions and tender, wild broccoli for the table. We’d all go out to rural fields to pick and bag these delectable greens, stuffing them into at least a half dozen brown paper shopping bags. Then, we’d sit on the back porch as the more experienced and wiser members cleaned, sliced and washed, followed by a good soaking in the large farm sink. The wild broccoli was dumped into huge, boiling pots of water to prepare them for the “greens, beans and white potatoes” flavored with home-made broth, and the wild dandelion was either mixed with vinegar and olive oil for the tastiest salads, or cooked along with other ingredients to create a meal . Forcing was done by Grandmom for a variety of plants in the garden by placing window glass over wooden 2X4’s that acted as a portable greenhouse, and tinier versions by using glass canning jars.

Been eating these for years, delish in a salad or lightly sauteed with olive oil and a bit of garlic. The secret’s out, now all those yuppies on the UWS can pay over the top prices at Fairway cause the NYT is now touting them.

Thanks for sharing Ava, you’ve made me take down my copy of Euell’s classic for a re-read! As a fellow urban forager from over the pond (Bristol UK), its always great to see what you lot are doing with the wild plants we gave you ;)

The flowers can also be made into a soft drink, Dandelion champagne, which is well worth a go. @dan I wouldn’t rule out eating them either, take off the green bits, bit in batter and fry. They make a great snack food.

I eat the root too, raw and cooked. South American folk medicine suggest this will help against altzimers.

Anyway, cheers again Ava. Glad that I’ve found this blog, I’m going to search through your other posts now!

Hey, don’t dis the poke. You have to pick it very young 3″ to 6″ sprouts are the best. If some of the sprouts have gotten taller, break them off and they will re-shoot. I fixed for dinner last week the following dish. I walked our perimeter and picked two fistfuls of poke shoots and parboiled them for just a few minutes. My spouse had weeded a flowerbed full of lambsquarters and had a good bundle of them, all about 8 inches tall. she chopped the roots off and then chopped the rinsed lambsquarters. I had easily pulled a dozen wild onions out of the soaked garden. All this rain! I cleaned the onions down to pearls and minced them. Sautee the onions in a tablespoon of good olive oil in an iron skillet. Put the chopped lambsquarters on top and then the drained poke, chopped, on top of those. Get them stirred and searing in the onion oil then add a quarter to half cup of water, put the lid on and then steam that down pretty rapidly until you get the liquid gone. Served with a good shot of balsamic vinegar, “Realsalt” sea salt and fresh pepper against hot brown buttered rice with a halved hard boiled egg. Just after Easter you know. Listen team, this is delicious. Poke can have a bit of bite due to iron, but their is no hazard from fresh young shoots. I should worry about that, with the amount of vodka I drink? Ha!

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